Health record banks and/or electronic health records or other collections of medical data over which a subject patient has at least partial control over exposure thereof, often include large membership populations and contain detailed demographic and health information about their members. A core motivating philosophy of these systems is that each member has strict control over the privacy of at least portions of his or her own data and must trust the system to respect that privacy.
Members of these types of systems often wish to participate in medical social network groups, to share insights into their illnesses, to learn about how others that are similarly situated have managed, or to discuss treatment options, and the like. However, members still desire to protect their privacy, at least until they reach a certain level of trust with other members of the medical social network groups.